Terminator Salvation: Review Central

[Tony Stark]

And speaking of Star Trek, was Christian Bale channeling William Shatner or something? What....was....with.....the....long.....pause.....between....every.....word?

 

[batmop]

Whoever ends up winning the war is irrelevant to me. That was never a big unanswered question. It was there to speculate on. I could careless if the humans or machines win in the end.

How the war ends and how humans prevail always WAS a big question, ever since T1 came out.

 

[Paradoxium]

A good foundation can stand on its own and not be dependent on other films. This assertion is even more meaningless if there are no subsequent film. What it "ought to be", does not mean what "it is".

 

[TheVileOne]

His shortcomings? Maybe McG is really trying to hide the shortcomings of the script he had to work with, or the pressures Halcyon and WB may have put on him? Hmmm ever bother to think of that before making McG be the fall guy for all the problems with this movie?

Oh wah freaking wah. Some bad news and now its all WB and Halcyon's fault!

I hope you realize how film making works. Halycon approached McG to direct the movie. The script was already written by Brancato and Ferris. McG wanted nothing to do with the movie (probably because of the awful script) but McG saw potential in showing the Future War on-screen.

News to me. And yet McG claims that Nolan was the true writer constantly to win favor with fans. People like Haggis were doing re-writes, and yet the only guys to get credit are Brancato and Ferris.

Then McG approached Bale and Bale wanted nothing to do with the movie too. That is until Bale saw McG's vision of the Future War and liked it.

Not according to EW. It was because McG begged him to give McG a chance.

There was no way for McG to get a new script going. The best he could do was rewrites. The rewrites made a totally awful script decent. If you people are criticizing the lack of characterization and emotion in the movie, just imagine how bad the script was BEFORE the rewrites.

This is hilarious bs and I'm not buying it. Is McG your cousin or something?

McG filmed a compromised movie due to the script. It was not a script McG liked or wanted. He was forced to work with it. He improved it with rewrites, but he could not entirely get rid of Brancato and Ferris' material. Halcyon hired Brancato and Ferris, and that is why McG was stuck with this script.

Then why did he freaking do it?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

McG did a good job given what he had to work with. Insider reports also say that he was pressured by WB to cut the movie to make it fit PG-13 because WB got greedy after Watchmen (R) didn't do so great. Even now the word is WB might not make another R movie again.

McG didn't paint that picture publically. I am going by McG's own personal and public statements.

 

[TheVileOne]

TS shows the beginning of the Future War. TS is a foundation for MORE movies, where we see the T-1000 AND where we see the end of the war.

Honestly what were you expecting?

Honestly this was what I was expecting. People trusted McG and his boastful, untruthful, and suspicious arrogance.

What I would've liked is some actual plot progression and telling us some things we might not have known or inferred from the other movies.

What if there are no more movies? Then we don't really learn anything.

 

[Paradoxium]

Honestly this was what I was expecting. People trusted McG and his boastful, untruthful, and suspicious arrogance.

What I would've liked is some actual plot progression and telling us some things we might not have known or inferred from the other movies.

What if there are no more movies? Then we don't really learn anything.

It's a rerun of Superman Returns

Fans kept saying SR is a solid foundation for more movies. We know what happened there

 

[FaT_tONle]

How the war ends and how humans prevail always WAS a big question, ever since T1 came out.

But it remained an unanswered question. It was never Cameron's intention to show the outcome of the war. The only thing that was important was that it happened... and Connor was the leader. I don't need a campy trilogy just to answer that question, so I am hoping this is the last.

 

[Visceral]

I hate it when people say that they wanted to love a film.

for me I either like it or i don't simple. I never want to like something i don't like because that doesn't make any sense.

 

[Tony Stark]

I hate it when people say that they wanted to love a film.

for me I either like it or i don't simple. I never want to like something i don't like because that doesn't make any sense.

Why is that so hard to understand? I am a fan of the Terminator series. T2 is one of my all time favorite sci-fi movies. I thought T3 was a letdown, and I thought this was going to be the movie to make up for it.

I personally don't know anyone who goes into a movie theater with no opinion, and just sits and waits to decide if they like it or not. If I'm laying down ten bucks to see a film, I want to enjoy it. I want to be entertained.

It's that I want to like something I don't like, it's that I care about this franchise, and I hate to see a less than mediocre film like this made out of it. The best I can say about this film is that it's not as bad as T3.

 

[craigdbfan]

TS shows the beginning of the Future War. TS is a foundation for MORE movies, where we see the T-1000 AND where we see the end of the war.

Honestly what were you expecting?

I expected for the altered future line to be thoroughly explored with intriguing characters and a solid story that covered completely new ground. Like someone mentioned it would have been awesome finding out how Skynet developed its time traveling devices and tons of other questions that have been posed but couldn't be answered until the "Future war" was covered.

Thats what you seem to be forgetting. The Future War shown in TS is a different war than the one witnessed in flashbacks from T1 and T2. That would allow McG tons of room to graze the Terminator mythos freely and add to the franchise to move it forward in a direction we haven't seen before.

 

[Octoberist]

but i do think that this new Terminator series is not exactly needed too. As much as I looked forward to Salvation, I think everybody thought it was a little redundant to have another one after T3.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

A movie shouldn't ever rely on its previous films or on its possible sequels to explain the events not explored in this film.

Meaning a film should hold itself up. Tons of folks have never seen the first Terminator film and have seen T2 and still think its a great movie. That shows that a good film doesn't need other movies to hold it together.

When a movie only uses the canon but laces it all with special effects and has little of the human effect people aren't going to enjoy the film. We need characters to care about. Characters that add weight to the film and not make the film seem hollow and empty.

Exactly, no movie should ever just be a lead into another movie, as another movie is never a sure thing, you concentrate on and complete your story IN ONE MOVIE and THEN you think about the next movie IF you make enough for it to happen. You dont make a movie thats lacklustre (judging from the reviews) and then use the excuse it was just a lead into the rest of the franchise, that is ridiculous.

I knew something was up from early on, when IMO, McG got the T-600's wrong if you cant get a simple detail like that right than there are surely going to be problems.

 

[Scarlet Spider]

McG filmed a compromised movie due to the script. It was not a script McG liked or wanted. He was forced to work with it. He improved it with rewrites, but he could not entirely get rid of Brancato and Ferris' material. Halcyon hired Brancato and Ferris, and that is why McG was stuck with this script.

Actually Brancato and Ferris wrote the script years before Halcyon bought the franchise rights or had anything to do with Terminator. Brancato and Ferris were hired by C2 Pictures, the previous rights holders and the company that produced T3.

After T3, Brancato and Ferris were hired again to write T4 and they were developing the film with Jonathan Mostow, who was attached to it at the time. Brancato and Ferris were Mostow's writers (they also wrote Mostow's upcoming Surrogates). They wrote their script around 2004-05 and Halcyon bought the franchise (along with the T4 script they had) from C2 in 2007.

 

[batmop]

Oh wah freaking wah. Some bad news and now its all WB and Halcyon's fault!

News to me. And yet McG claims that Nolan was the true writer constantly to win favor with fans. People like Haggis were doing re-writes, and yet the only guys to get credit are Brancato and Ferris.

Not according to EW. It was because McG begged him to give McG a chance.

This is hilarious bs and I'm not buying it. Is McG your cousin or something?

Then why did he freaking do it?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

McG didn't paint that picture publically. I am going by McG's own personal and public statements.

Right, because you worked on the movie, and you definitely know that McG could have had a completely different script . Give me a break. The only thing hilarious here are your statements.

I'm not McG. I don't know why he did it, but I DO KNOW he was STUCK with the script.

Brancato and Ferris get credit, as per WGA rules more than 50% of the material was written by them, even after rewrites.

I'm not even a McG fan, so I don't know why I am defending him against silly criticism, all of which can be avoided by using a bit of common sense and some research.

It's a rerun of Superman Returns

Fans kept saying SR is a solid foundation for more movies. We know what happened there

We sure do know. A MAJOR screw-up on the part of WB.

But it remained an unanswered question. It was never Cameron's intention to show the outcome of the war. The only thing that was important was that it happened... and Connor was the leader. I don't need a campy trilogy just to answer that question, so I am hoping this is the last.

It was never Cameron's intention to show the war period. He only gave teasing glimpses with the flash-forward scenes. That is why Cameron agreed with McG that showing the war on-screen is an interesting idea because it had not been done.

This trilogy has an opportunity to answer a lot of questions and raise new ones, as long as Brancato and Ferris are not the ones writing the script.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

But it remained an unanswered question. It was never Cameron's intention to show the outcome of the war. The only thing that was important was that it happened... and Connor was the leader. I don't need a campy trilogy just to answer that question, so I am hoping this is the last.

Err actually Kyle says in T1 that the humans had won and sending the T-800 back in time was their last resort, not to mention the sequence were the humans defeat Skynet is when Kyle is sent back and this was going to be the opening scene of T2 but it was cut for budgetary issues, so he had every intention of showing the outcome of the war.

 

[SatEL]

So they say.

I don't get people making excuses and trying to defend McG. How is this not the movie he wanted to make? How was he stuck with the script? Christian Bale didn't care for the scripts that McG pitched to him. McG begged and begged Bale to do this movie and had the script re-written constantly to try and appease Bale. So how did McG not have any say in the direction of the story? Was McG not the one that seemed to be aware of the dislike for the original ending and the want from fans to change it?

SatEl, what kind of expectations should we have had when we have McG coming out at SDCC acting like he has the blessing of Jim Cameron himself who signed off on his movie.

Well people should have been more open to the idea that the film might have sucked or might not have reached the level they wanted it to reach. Looking at the trailers its a safe assumption to say this film looks nothing more than brainless popcorn fun in the same league as Transformers and the likes. I am sure with a Nolan and Bale involved people were expecting epic like a certain film last year but alas that seemingly doesnt seem to be the case. Was the film at least fun for you despite it not meeting expectations?

 

[TheVileOne]

I'm not McG. I don't know why he did it, but I DO KNOW he was STUCK with the script.

How do you know that?

Brancato and Ferris get credit, as per WGA rules more than 50% of the material was written by them, even after rewrites.

So what does McG mean when he never met them and when he painted a picture to fans that Nolan was the true writer and onset and changed a lot and Haggis did re-writes?

I'm not even a McG fan, so I don't know why I am defending him against silly criticism, all of which can be avoided by using a bit of common sense and some research.

Not all you research is right as Brancato and Ferris wrote a script before Halycon was even involved.

It was never Cameron's intention to show the war period. He only gave teasing glimpses with the flash-forward scenes. That is why Cameron agreed with McG that showing the war on-screen is an interesting idea because it had not been done.

Cameron never gave his blessing though. McG lied at Comic Con and said Cameron gave him his blessing.

This trilogy has an opportunity to answer a lot of questions and raise new ones, as long as Brancato and Ferris are not the ones writing the script.

You are basically implying that McG was forced into this because he wanted to make more movies about the future wars but was stuck making an inferior script into a movie as a result. That makes no sense.

 

[batmop]

I expected for the altered future line to be throughly explored with intriguing characters and a solid story that covered completely new ground. Like someone mentioned it would have been awesome finding out how Skynet developed its time traveling devices and tons of other questions that have been posed but couldn't be answered until the "Future war" was covered.

Thats what you seem to be forgetting. The Future War shown in TS is a different war than the one witnessed in flashbacks from T1 and T2. That would allow McG tons of room to graze the Terminator mythos freely and add to the franchise to move it forward in a direction we haven't seen before.

This movie doesn't deal with time travel. It shows how John becomes leader, how Marcus is involved with the creation of the T-800, and how Skynet rises to even higher power. Are you going to tell me the movie doesn't show this?

How is this Future War a different war? What proof do you have this is not the same war shown in T1 and T2?

Actually Brancato and Ferris wrote the script years before Halcyon bought the franchise rights or had anything to do with Terminator. Brancato and Ferris were hired by C2 Pictures, the previous rights holders and the company that produced T3.

After T3, Brancato and Ferris were hired again to write T4 and they were developing the film with Jonathan Mostow, who was attached to it at the time. Brancato and Ferris were Mostow's writers (they also wrote Mostow's upcoming Surrogates). They wrote their script around 2004-05 and Halcyon bought the franchise (along with the T4 script they had) from C2 in 2007.

Thanks for the insight. It further adds to my point. Originally Mostow's writers that became Halcyon's writers. Either way, they were responsible for that mess of a Terminator movie called T3, and McG had to work with their script for T4. With rewrites McG made the T4 script tolerable.

 

[Octoberist]

uwwwwww. debates galore!

 

[craigdbfan]

This movie doesn't deal with time travel. It shows how John becomes leader, how Marcus is involved with the creation of the T-800, and how Skynet rises to even higher power. Are you going to tell me the movie doesn't show this?

How is this Future War a different war? What proof do you have this is not the same war shown in T1 and T2?

The damn trailer and the synopsis is my proof. John Conner in the trailer says "This is not the future my mother warned me about".

Here's the synopsis if you missed it:

In the highly anticipated new installment of The Terminator film franchise, set in post-apocalyptic 2018, Christian Bale stars as John Connor, the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators. But the future Connor was raised to believe in is altered in part by the appearance of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a stranger whose last memory is of being on death row. Connor must decide whether Marcus has been sent from the future, or rescued from the past. As Skynet prepares its final onslaught, Connor and Marcus both embark on an odyssey that takes them into the heart of Skynet's operations, where they uncover the terrible secret behind the possible annihilation of mankind.

I'm not just grabbing all these expectations from my ass. Its what the trailer and the synopsis implied.

 

[Anita18]

Worthington's and Chris Hemsworth's appearances out of nowhere have me a bit nervous too. The fact that both are Australians and came into prominence after Ledger's death makes me wonder if studios aren't just hoping to find the next Heath. I suppose it's a bit far-fetched but it's a fear I have.

Yeah, you're nuts. Avatar and Star Trek were already filming before Ledger died. And there are tons of Australian actors in Hollywood. Are you saying that Hugh Jackman is the next Heath Ledger?

 

[FCEEVIPER]

It's like the old Superman Returns boards all over again.

 

[Paradoxium]

With rewrites McG made the T4 script tolerable.

I don't pay money to watch tolerable.

 

[Anita18]

I don't pay money to watch tolerable.

I do like to watch things blow up real good though.

But yeah, when attached to a tolerable movie, it's at most a matinee.

 

[Tony Stark]

This movie doesn't deal with time travel.

Then why have Kyle Reese in it at all?